On the one-year anniversary of the ESV Study Bible, Justin Taylor reveals that a new Bible atlas is in production.

For those who have appreciated the maps and illustrations in the ESVSB, in June we’ll release the Crossway ESV Bible Atlas, which we’re very excited about. It was a huge project, but OT scholar and archaeologist John Currid (RTS-Charlotte) and cartographer David Barrett have done an outstanding job with it. There’s about 65,000 words explaining the geography and cultures of the biblical world, along with 175 full-color maps, including some in 3D, 70 photos, numerous recreations, a fully searchable CD, and a detailed 16.5 x 22-inch map of Palestine.

He does not mention that David Barrett is also the creator of the recently released Bible Mapper 4. 

Readers here may be interested to know that the majority of the photos in the new atlas come from the image collection of BiblePlaces.com.

HT: Ted Weis

If, like me, you’re a fan of Bible Mapper, you’ll be pleased to know that version 4 has just been released. 

Bible Mapper is still the best program for making custom maps of the Middle East, and now it includes 35 pre-made Bible maps that get you off to a quick start.  You can see some of these in the gallery. 

There are a number of other improvements as well that may not sound so impressive, but really make the program more enjoyable to use.  This includes:

• Select Object engine that uses the cursor is much faster at any zoom level and is more forgiving about how close you have to click on an object to select it (e.g., routes and rivers are easier to select)
• A basic blank map template is included that contains essentially all the basic styles that you need to create a professional-quality map (journey path styles, political label styles, river label styles, etc.)

You can read more of the improvements on the website.  If you have any need for maps, I encourage you to check it out.  As before, use of the maps you create is virtually unrestricted.

 “Samson’s Exploits” – one of the new maps in Bible Mapper 4.0

The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary is out, according to a couple of friends who have received their 5-volume sets in the mail.  The editor, John Walton, hams it up in this 1.5-minute promo video.  If you prefer a more serious approach, take a look at this 2.5-minute descriptive video.  I see that an electronic version will be produced for Logos, but unfortunately Zondervan’s pricing strategy on electronic volumes does not seem to include discounting.  This month you can read the Judges commentary, written by Daniel I. Block, for free.  I commented on this set before here, but I didn’t note that hundreds of the 2,000 photos came from the BiblePlaces.com archive.

You know that the year is drawing to a close when you see calendars for 2010 on store racks.  I just received yesterday the 2010 Holy Land Calendar produced by Lamb and Lion Ministries, which exclusively features photographs from BiblePlaces.com.  The calendar notes all the major American holidays, and its inclusion of the Jewish holy days makes it a great way to keep track of important events not on many American calendars. You can purchase this beautiful calendar online, and if you order 10 (for Christmas gifts), they will give you two for free.